Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  She sent them both to Hick, who considered the article on tolerance “the best thing you’ve done in ages. It satisfies me completely. I gather that the President okayed it. What did he say about it?” Evidently FDR “read it” with no particular reaction, and “just said it was OK with him to send it.”

  FDR also read her article on Jews, which she wrote for Liberty magazine, without comment: “FDR read it and it is the way I feel so I hope no one whom I care about will have their feelings hurt.”

  Untitled, ER’s “Jewish article” called for a campaign of understanding to confront “the present catastrophe for Jew and Gentile alike…. In books … schools, newspapers, plays, assemblies we want incessant truth telling about these old legends that divide and antagonize and waste us.”

  As she struggled to understand “the kind of racial and religious intolerance which is sweeping the world today,” ER rejected her former emphasis on assimilation. On 19 November 1938, ER replied to a correspondent who had written asking how to end “the ever-increasing tide of anti-Semitism”: “I think it is important in this country that the Jews as Jews remain unaggressive and stress the fact that they are Americans first and above everything else.”

  Now ER assessed the historic hatred of Jews, their isolation, and forced ghettoization in the Middle Ages, and the ongoing contempt for Jews: Even where restrictive laws had been eased, assimilation had been “a slow process, particularly where a proud people is concerned and today we are seeing … a return to the attitude of the Middle Ages.”

  ER now pointed out that even when Jews attempted to assimilate they were condemned for “being too ostentatiously patriotic and of pushing themselves forward as nationals,” as in Austria and Germany.

  ER was also sensitive to the difficulties assimilated Jews faced among their coreligionists, who resented those who strayed from tradition. Never quite accepted into the majority culture, they were everywhere marginalized. She asked: How had these difficult and emotional problems been so quickly transformed into a raging epidemic of bigotry and official policies of persecution that now threatened doom.

  Opposition to Jews as a race and a religion was complicated, and began with Christianity. The “blame it seems to me can not be entirely shrugged off the shoulders of the Gentiles.” ER rejected ghettoization and deplored signs that appeared in many American neighborhoods that read “No Dogs or Jews Allowed.”

  She reviewed the cavils against Jews, their “mannerisms or traits of character which rub us the wrong way,” but none of that was enough to explain this hateful, bewildering moment. There were other stereotypes used for “other nationals and we have no desire to wipe out any of them.” Nobody suggested “we go forth and slay the foreign citizens” from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, or countries in Asia.

  ER believed that the missing element was fear:

  It is the secret fear that the Jewish people are stronger or more able than those who still wield superior physical power over them, which brings about oppression. I believe that those nations which do not persecute are saved only by confidence in themselves and a feeling that they can still defend themselves and their own place in the world. Therefore, I am forced to the conclusion that the Jewish people though they may be in part responsible for the present situation are not as responsible as the other races who need to examine themselves and grapple with their own fears.

  I think we, and by we I mean the people of Europe as well as the people of the U.S., have pushed the Jewish races into Zionism and Palestine, and into their nationalistic attitude. Having that great responsibility upon us, I think it lies with us to free ourselves of our fears….

  Written from within the veil of her own stereotypes, ER concluded that the future was not up to the Jews.

  The Jew is almost powerless today. It depends almost entirely on the course of the Gentiles what the future holds. It can be cooperative, mutual assistance, gradual slow assimilation with justice and fair-mindedness towards all racial groups living together in different countries or it can be injustice, hatred and death.

  It looks to me as though the future of the Jews were tied up as it has always been with the future of all the races of the world. If they perish, we perish sooner or later….

  ER’s first article on Jew-hatred assumed Jews were the other. It was written in language that reflected stereotypes of the 1930s. She now intended to combat those attitudes; Hick also confronted her feelings:

  I like it very much. Of course my feeling personally is that Gentiles are more afraid of the everlasting energy of the Jews than of their ability. I suspect that energy, the energy of a people who have always had to go twice as far to get anywhere as people of other races, is what gives them the traits that some of us gentiles dislike so much. That’s probably why they push and shove in crowds, elbow their way in ahead of you at ticket windows, and try to “put things over” on you in business deals. Thousands of years of conditioning in an unfriendly world that doesn’t want them has made them that way. The result is that, given a Jew and a gentile, with equal ability, the Jew will nearly always outdistance the Gentile! Am I right or wrong?

  If ER winced at her friend’s words, she knew that anti-Jewish feelings were as pervasive throughout Anglo-American society as they were within the Reich. In self-protection, many prominent Jews clung to a steadfast silence, which ER regretted. Her November article on tolerance, subsequently published as Keepers of Democracy, was among her most forthright.

  If you are in the South someone tells you solemnly that all the members of the Committee of Industrial Organization (CIO) are Communists, or that the Negroes are all Communists…. In another part of the country someone tells you solemnly that the schools … are menaced because they are all under the influence of Jewish teachers and that the Jews, forsooth, are all Communists. And so it goes, until finally you realize that people have reached a point where anything which will save them from Communism is a godsend; and if Fascism or Nazism promises more security than our own democracy we may even turn to them.

  She recalled that as a child her uncle Theodore Roosevelt once said “that when you are afraid to do a thing, that was the time to go and do it. Every time we shirk making up our minds or standing up for a cause in which we believe, we weaken our character and our ability to be fearless.”

  To fight intolerance, we must fight fear. Fascism depended on fear and intolerance; on lies and twisted words; on force and violence. ER rejected easy solutions, and defended especially the new movements the AYC and the SCHW represented.

  ER was also conviced that this moment presented a particular challenge to women “to foster democracy” and reignite their movement.

  Only our young people still seem to have some strength and hope, and apparently we are afraid to give them a helping hand….

  I think we need a rude awakening, to make us exert all the strength we have to face facts as they exist in our country and in the world, and to make us willing to sacrifice all that we have from the material standpoint in order that freedom and democracy may not perish from this earth.

  ER challenged Americans to think and act politically, to engage in activist citizenship, to become their best selves. A sense of personal unimportance was encouraged by dictators. Democracy depended on “freedom from prejudice, and public awareness.” It required education, economic security, and personal devotion, “a real devotion to freedom…. Freedom is something to guard jealously,” but it can never be “freedom for me and not for you.”

  The bolder ER became, the tougher and more adamant her statements, the higher her public approval rating soared. On 16 January 1939, the New York Times published a poll taken by George Gallup regarding America’s feelings about ER during 1938. The results were astounding. Two voters in every three voted in her favor (67 percent approved of her conduct, 33 percent disapproved). The poll was accompanied by such comments as “She lives a useful life and keeps busy.” “She sets a good example by encouraging worthwhile things.”

>   According to the poll she had a greater approval rating than FDR. Over 30 million favored ER, while the president polled 27.5 million. Also unlike FDR, ER had the approval of a majority of voters even in the upper income group: upper income, 54 percent; middle income, 65 percent; lower income, 76 percent.

  Given the nature of the controversies ER engaged in and her challenge to work for the transformation of customs and traditions that subjected so many to poverty and powerlessness, America’s response indicated a commitment to the very democracy she spoke about so earnestly. ER touched a nerve center in America, and the country would never be the same.

  On 20 December, ER and Hick shared their annual pre-Christmas party. Free of the tensions that had soured their friendship on occasion, the evening was warm, tender, perfect. Hick wrote:

  Dearest, I did have a grand time last night. I can’t really find words to tell you about it. It isn’t the things you give people … but the thought and care that you put into it all that means so much. All the little details, like the artichokes for supper, the candles and Christmas tree, the warmth and coziness of it all, the expression on your face when one is opening the presents and is pleased—oh, darling, you are swell! It’s a kind of generosity of the soul that you have….

  You will gather, Mrs. Doaks (Joseph V., of Oelwein, Iowa) that I had a thoroughly good time last night and this morning….

  ER returned to Washington on the 23rd, where she was greeted by a “house full of people and so far all is well! FDR has a slight cold but not bad.” She reported: “I’ve worked all day on mail and Xmas things and done nothing official but have Lady Lindsay bring some English ladies to tea….”

  But her private fears were revealed in her reply to Hick’s lost Christmas greeting. Although she wanted Hick close by, and more routinely in Washington, as her new job as Molly Dewson’s replacement would assure, she did not want Hick to entertain illusions about long and exclusive times together:

  Your day letter came today and I wish you a quiet heart and a sense of serenity.—Few of us know what our heart’s desire is dear and if we had what we fancied was our desire it would probably turn to dust and ashes so serenity and peace are safer wishes dear!…

  On 28 December, all thoughts of gloom were suspended entirely for a night of carefree festivity to honor ER’s niece Eleanor Roosevelt II, Hall’s daughter. It was the first debutante dance in the White House since William Howard Taft’s 1910 party for his daughter Helen. ER hosted a splendid affair and looked dazzling in “bright red chiffon sparkling with rhinestones and jeweled embroidery.” ER II was radiant in an “all white ruffled frock of French organdy,” and led the dancing with her father in a Virginia reel. The First Lady and her brother waltzed through the night, surrounded by friends and family, mostly cousins, including TR’s family, and SDR was regal in “black satin and old lace.” The evening was highlighted by Mayris (Tiny) Chaney’s new dance, the Eleanor Glide.

  As 1938 drew to a close, ER emphasized action, a politics of example. She had joined the fray with her first April 1934 speech to black educators, when she said that we all “go ahead together, or we go down together.” In a 1937 address in Harlem, to “an enthusiastic, cheering crowd of 2500” at the Mother A.M.E. Zion Church, she called for “equal rights” for all Americans:

  In this country we should all have, certainly, equal rights, and minorities should certainly have those exactly as majorities have them.

  On 10 February 1938, ER commemorated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by asserting that while Abraham Lincoln took the “first step toward the abolition of slavery … we still do tolerate slavery in several ways.” Her words, addressed to nine thousand people at a meeting sponsored by the National Negro Congress, were electrifying:

  There are still slaves of many different kinds, and today we are facing another era in which we have to make certain things become facts rather than beliefs.

  As Europe fell to fascism, ER and her new network of youth and race radicals heralded the greatest changes in America since the betrayal of Reconstruction.

  In her 8 December 1938 column, ER criticized liberals, smug partisans, and patriots for celebrating incomplete victories. The speeches given the night before at a dinner for the Léon Blum colony for European refugees in Palestine had annoyed her profoundly. She supported the refugee sanctuary founded to honor France’s first socialist and Jewish prime minister. His popular front government collapsed after the left withdrew because he failed to support democratic Spain, and the right campaigned with the slogan “Better Hitler than Blum.” In the bitter context of that meeting, ER was dismayed by the unwarranted pride and complacency of the speakers:

  “As I listened … I could not help thinking how much all human beings like to fool themselves…. [They] made us feel that … we were more virtuous and fortunate than any other people in the world. Of course, I concede this, and I feel for me it is true, for I have been free and fortunate all my life. While I listened, however, I could not help thinking of some of the letters which pass through my hands.

  “Are you free if you cannot vote, if you cannot be sure that the same justice will be meted out to you as to your neighbor,… if you are barred from certain places and from certain opportunities?…

  “Are you free when you can’t earn enough, no matter how hard you work, to feed and clothe and house your children properly? Are you free when your employer can turn you out of a company house and deny you work because you belong to a union?”

  Her thoughts turned to refugees in this country, “of the little girl who wrote me not long ago: ‘Why do other children call me names and laugh at my talk? I just don’t live in this country very long yet.’ ‘’ ER concluded:

  “There are lots and lots of things which make me wonder whether we ever look ourselves straight in the face and really mean what we say when we are busy patting ourselves on the back….”

  With grit, determination, and a very high heart, ER helped launch America’s crusade for freedom in the fascist era. She was fortified every day by her new allies, her abiding partnership with FDR, love for the people in her life, and love of the world.

  *Nicolson lunched with Litvinov on 22 August and asked for his views on the looming crisis. Litvinov replied that the “old pan-Slav feeling is dead, Russia has no sympathy for the semi-fascist systems established in the Balkans, and… is profoundly disillusioned with the western democracies.” If Britain and France defended the Czechs, “then Russia would help. But if the western powers abandon Czechoslovakia, then Russia will become isolationist.”

  *The savage hurricane of 1938 blasted into the east coast without warning on 21 September in the middle of the afternoon. The New York Times headlined Czechoslovakia’s demise, and gave the forecast for the Northeast as overcast, a chance of rain, a mild September day. By three o’clock winds exceeded 100 miles per hour and the ocean rushed five miles from the shore in mighty waves on the East End of Long Island. Just east of Hick’s Little House, towns from Westhampton to Montauk were rendered rubble. In Westhampton, where 179 houses stood, 153 completely vanished. In Rhode Island, 380 people were dead. Up and down the coast 63,000 people were rendered homeless; 275 million trees were uprooted, including half of New Hampshire’s white pines and most of Vermont’s maples.

  * During the 1940s, the International Red Cross deflected complaints about its neglect of Jewish needs, given the magnitude of the mounting tragedy, with the explanation that the Red Cross “could not interfere in the internal affairs of a belligerent nation.”

  *Between 1933 and 1945, Canada admitted only five thousand refugees. Early in 1945 a senior Canadian official was asked during a press conference how many Jews would be admitted after the war. “None,” he answered, “is too many.”

  * In addition to the conveners, Louise Charlton, the Durrs, Joe Gelder, and Lucy Randolph Mason, there were journalists and scholars; administration representatives, including Aubrey Williams and Mary McLeod Bethune;
industrialists, lawyers, clergymen; socialists and communists, including Jane and Dolly Speed, who ran a Communist Party bookstore in Birmingham, and Rob Hall, party secretary for Alabama; AYC activist James Jackson, there as Gunnar Myrdal’s assistant; politicians, including Governor Bibb Graves and Florida senator Claude Pepper; historians C. Vann Woodward, Horace Mann Bond, and Arthur Raper; sociologist Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University; Tuskegee University president F. D. Patterson; representatives of the National Urban League and the NAACP; John Davis of the National Negro Congress; Myles Horton and James Dombrowski, who ran the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, which ER supported and which trained union organizers; H. L. Mitchell and representatives of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union; mine workers, steelworkers, and grassroots activists.

  NOTES

  1: Becoming First Lady

  10 For Elisabeth Marbury see Notable American Women. See also Kim Marra, “A Lesbian Marriage of Cultural Consequence: Elisabeth Marbury and Elsie de Wolfe, 1886–1933,” in Kim Mara and Robert Schanke, eds., Passing Performances: Queer Readings of Leading Players in American Theater History (University of Michigan, 1998). In the Women’s Democratic News, ER celebrated Marbury’s “ease of expression and witty and fertile mind. She was always interesting even though we did not always agree with her….”

  11 For Malvina Thompson Scheider, first called Tommy by the children, I am grateful for information from her niece, Eleanor Lund Zartman.